by Alex Gerlis
It was almost as if he’d been trained.
* * *
Richard Prince woke late on the Friday morning and strolled down to the seafront where he stayed in a pretty cafe for over an hour, drinking three cups of sweet Greek coffee. He took his time to walk along the front to the White Tower and from there looked around the Hagia Sophia, the city’s Greek Orthodox cathedral. It wasn’t as impressive as its Turkish namesake, but he realised he may have become blasé and in any case it was a place to while away the time.
He walked slowly back to Aristotelous Square, stopping on the way at another cafe for a lunch of fresh sardines and an enormous salad and a bottle of cold beer. He was almost relaxed. He hadn’t seen Georgi, though at one point in the Hagia Sophia he sensed someone moving unseen behind and then perhaps alongside him, but then he recalled his dream about the Blue Mosque and wondered whether these magnificent Ottoman places of worship were having an unexpected effect on him.
He returned to the hotel, had a cool bath and walked to Bar Parnassus, but this time by a different route, through the centre, away from the seafront and through the deathly quiet streets of what had been the Jewish ghetto.
He was five minutes early when he walked into the kitchen at the back of the bar. Apostolos was waiting for him, pacing up and down, an anxious look on his face.
‘He’s been here half an hour already. He wanted to come as soon as I got the message to him. Come with me.’
He led him upstairs to the small room off the first-floor landing. It was much quieter than on the night before. As he entered the room a man slightly older than him and of a similar height was standing with his back to the wall, facing the door. The first thought that struck Prince was how recognisable this man was as a fellow police officer. He’d have been hard pressed to explain why: maybe the way his eyes quickly assessed him, looking up and down and then beyond him to see if anyone else was there; possibly the way his hands were held by his side, ready for any reaction; or just his general demeanour, that of a man constantly exposed to the more unsavoury side of human life.
Lieutenant Theodoropoulos spoke in Greek to Apostolos who translated.
‘He wants to see the letter you’ve brought from Alvertos and your passport.’
He read the letter carefully and checked the passport, glancing up and down at Prince as he did so. He spoke again to Apostolos.
‘He says he doesn’t speak Irish.’
‘I didn’t expect him to. Nor do I – does he speak any English?’
Another short conversation followed, the shaking of the head making the answer apparent.
‘He speaks some German. Otherwise I’ll have to translate.’
‘I’ll speak with him in German. Maybe it would be better if you left us for a while, Apostolos.’
The two policemen sat opposite each other, shaking hands as they did so.
‘How is Alvertos?’
‘He’s well but very anxious of course about Moris and obviously grief-stricken about the rest of his family.’
‘The Germans…’ he paused, removing a packet of cigarettes and giving one to Prince before lighting them both. ‘The Germans are animals, bastards. Women, children, old folk… are being sent to their death, that’s no secret. I bitterly regret the way we’ve been drawn into it. There’s no question I’m complicit – we all are. That’s one of the reasons I rescued Moris, so that when the war ends I can show I helped the right side. I don’t really know who you are but I think you may be someone who could help me. Plus it absolves me of my debt to Alvertos and, perhaps most importantly, my wife insisted we save a Jewish child.’
‘Is Moris safe?’
‘He’s very safe. He’s living on a farm with my wife’s cousins on Kassandra, which is a peninsula on Halkidiki, an hour or so south of the city. His papers are good, but they keep him away from school, just to be safe. He never leaves the farm and he never says anything about his family or the ghetto. In fact he doesn’t say much at all – he spends his time playing with the dogs, he loves them. And now Alvertos wants him brought to Turkey?’
‘Yes, he—’
‘…he must be mad. Typical Alvertos, he’s impetuous and utterly irresponsible. Sending him on a journey like that with someone who doesn’t speak his language… it’s exposing.’
‘I have papers for him and—’
‘It’s crazy. When do you propose to travel?’
‘Monday, there’s a train on Monday night. I think Alvertos thought the night train would be safer as Moris would sleep on the journey.’
‘For thirteen or fourteen hours? Come on…’ Lieutenant Theodoropoulos said nothing for a while, the fingers of both hands pressed against his face, trying to think his way out of this.
‘Maybe we can drug him on the journey, pretend he’s unwell or something? Fortunately, I’m not working this weekend. Tomorrow my wife and I will drive down to Kassandra to collect Moris and we’ll bring him back to Thessaloniki on Sunday. You’ll meet him then and you’ll be on the train together Monday night.’
‘Will your wife be all right with this?’
‘My wife? Of course she’s saving a soul after all!’
* * *
That Friday – the same day Prince met Lieutenant Theodoropoulos in Thessaloniki – the concierge at the Hotel Bristol in Istanbul made up his mind.
Ismet was a worried and embittered man. In his considered opinion, he was not treated well: not by the management at the hotel who should have promoted him by now, as they kept promising; not by Inspector Uzun or anyone else at the secret police who just took him for granted and were decidedly mean in paying him for his information; and certainly not by his miserable and demanding wife, who at least gave him a reason to get out of the house and come to work.
A week before there’d been a visit by two men from the British consulate, a Mr Stone and a Mr Bryant. It was well known they were British agents and it was well known the intelligence community in Istanbul paid well for information. He’d spotted them on their way towards reception but managed to head them off before they got there.
In what way could he help them? Perhaps they’d like a coffee, or join him for a drink in the bar?
They explained they were making enquiries – on behalf of the consulate – about a Michael Eugene Doyle and were wondering whether he was a guest at the hotel. Ismet had made a play of being unsure but said he’d check the register and returned to tell them they had indeed had a guest of that name, but he had checked out unexpectedly early.
‘When might that have been?’
‘Let me see… Mr Doyle arrived at the hotel on 29th August and checked out last Friday, which was the 10th. He checked out early, which was a shame as it was before I came on duty and I didn’t have an opportunity to bid him farewell.’
More questions followed.
‘No, he didn’t say where he was going, no he didn’t leave a forwarding address, no he didn’t leave any messages – or anything in his room. He was an unremarkable guest, polite and friendly, interested in my advice on what to see and where to go in Istanbul.’
Ismet asked why two men from the British consulate were interested in a citizen from another country, and Mr Stone and Mr Bryant looked somewhat flustered. One of them said something about the two countries being connected, how it was a complicated relationship, but they left very soon after that.
Ismet should have gone straight to Inspector Uzun with this information; if Stone and Bryant were British agents and they were interested in Michael Eugene Doyle then Inspector Uzun ought to be more interested in him too. But he was still angry at the way he was being treated, so decided to ponder on things for a few days.
He finally decided to go and see him on the Friday, which happened to be the day after Michael Eugene Doyle had arrived in Thessaloniki. He finished work early that afternoon and took a taxi to the office of the secret police near the Dolmabahçe Palace and insisted on seeing Inspector Uzun.
The inspector was pleased
with the information. As Ismet had suspected, if the two British agents were interested in the Irish journalist so was he.
‘You say they visited the hotel this morning?’
‘No inspector, you couldn’t have been listening properly. I told you, they came to the hotel last Thursday, the 16th, and the Irishman checked out two weeks ago, on the 10th.’
Inspector Uzun looked furious. ‘You’ve waited a whole week to tell me?’
‘I’ve been busy, inspector. I have to earn a living. Perhaps if you’d been more willing to pay for information I’d have been able to come to you earlier.’
Inspector Uzun moved fast once he’d thrown Ismet out of his office. He called four of his men in and gave them the details of the Irishman. There had to be some trace of him over the past two weeks, even just a record of him leaving the city. They were to check everything, even if that meant working through the night. They’d reconvene first thing in the morning – well, at ten o’clock.
The night’s work produced results. Michael Eugene Doyle had travelled on an Irish passport on the train from Sirkeci station to Thessaloniki just two days ago, on Thursday 23rd. The train had left Sirkeci just after six in the morning and, according to the train’s guard, the Irishman had been on the train when it arrived in Thessaloniki later that evening.
Uzun dismissed his confused officers, assuring them the case was now closed as this Doyle, if that was how it was pronounced, was no longer in Turkey. One of his officers did say this man could return to Istanbul, but Uzun told him to forget it. ‘We have enough on our plate as it is.’
The door had barely closed before he was on the phone to Herr Busch at the German consulate, a man who paid particularly generously for information.
* * *
Richard Prince left the hotel just off Aristotelous Square just after ten o’clock on the Monday morning, hoping for another pleasant stroll along the seafront, a leisurely early lunch in a cafe he’d become rather fond of over the weekend and then back to the hotel to check out before making his way to Bar Parnassus, from where Apostolos was going to take him to meet Moris, and from there to the station.
He’d hardly left the hotel when a car pulled up and Georgi the Bulgarian opened the door and told him to get in. Five minutes later they were with Apostolos and Mihalis Theodoropoulos in the Bar Parnassus. Both men looked worried.
‘We have a problem. The Germans know about you,’ said Lieutenant Theodoropoulos.
‘How come?’
‘When I got into work this morning I saw there was an alert out for you. It’s come from the Gestapo office in the city and as far as I can gather they’re acting on information they’ve received from the Abwehr in Istanbul. Fortunately no one has got round to checking the hotel registers yet. Georgi has gone back to your hotel to collect your things and pay the bill. He’ll ensure you don’t appear on any records there.’
‘I dread to think how much that’s going to cost us,’ said Apostolos.
‘That’s the least of our problems. Travelling back by train is out of the question, the Germans will be waiting for you at the station. I need to think…’
‘What about the boy?’
‘Moris is safe. We brought him back from Kassandra yesterday. We’ve had to tell him a friend of his father has come to take him to see his father. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left the dogs. My wife is looking after him at our house.’
Apostolos and Theodoropoulos spoke in Greek for a while. Prince couldn’t tell if they were arguing or whether it was just the way they spoke. Both men looked worried and the room was soon thick with cigarette smoke.
‘Apostolos has come up with an idea,’ said Theodoropoulos. ‘You can’t leave Thessaloniki by train and we can’t drive you as they’ll be watching the border. Nor can you – or Moris – stay in the city, it’s far too risky. But his idea is a good one though it will take him a few days to arrange matters.’
‘What is this idea?’
Another conversation in Greek, much shrugging of shoulders.
‘I hope you don’t get seasick, my friend.’
Chapter 20
Ravensbrück concentration camp, north of Berlin
October 1943
A black cat.
Of all people, Hanne Jakobsen really ought to have known better. When she’d joined the murder squad in Copenhagen she’d been assigned a particularly troublesome case. It was the kind of thankless case they allocated to newcomers to the notoriously tight-knit murder squad, few of whom had taken kindly to a woman joining their ranks.
A jeweller had been found murdered at the back of his shop in Lyngby, just to the north of Copenhagen. He’d been strangled and his body wrapped in tarpaulin. At first it didn’t look as if robbery was the motive. There were no signs of a break-in and no jewellery appeared to have been stolen, although it did later transpire a small number of the most valuable items in the shop were missing. Suspicion fell on the man’s business partner: the two had recently fallen out over how much money they paid themselves and the suspect had racked up a considerable amount of personal debt.
But although everything pointed to the partner – a grossly overweight man called Lars, if she remembered correctly – there was little against him other than a few bits of weak circumstantial evidence. By the time Hanne joined the murder squad Lars was under arrest for having broken into the house of his estranged wife, but everyone knew their main suspect was about to slip away.
Hanne interrogated Lars and was convinced he’d murdered his partner. She couldn’t work out whether he was very smart or just plain lucky so she came up with a plan. She arranged for him to be transferred to Vestre prison, the largest in Denmark and a foreboding place. He spent two tense nights in a cell with a particularly violent criminal so when he was transferred to another cell he was well disposed towards his new cellmate – a quiet, nervous type who’d been arrested for stealing from his employer. This man confided in Lars: he’d taken far more money than he was suspected of but had no idea what to do with it. Lars promised to help him and after a few days he began to confide in his new friend. He admitted he’d killed his business partner – more an accident than anything else, an argument that had gone badly wrong – but he expected to be released soon as they had no evidence. He was too clever for the police, especially now they’d put a woman detective on the case!
‘Tell me where your money is hidden and I’ll get you the best lawyer in Copenhagen.’
But the other man in the cell was what the police called a black cat: its stealth-like presence not always apparent, its knowing eyes taking everything in, its loyalties uncertain. The black cat was a police spy and his evidence helped convict Lars.
And now Hanne realised a black cat had entered her miserable existence in Ravensbrück and, of course, without her realising it. Ground down by the lack of food, poor sanitation, no privacy, the fear and the degradation, she’d been only too happy when she was befriended by a French woman of a similar age to her. Marie had moved into her hut and then they found themselves in the same workshop. She spoke good German and always seemed to have a spare chunk of bread she was willing to share with her new Danish friend.
It was gradual, so gradual Hanne never saw it. Marie never asked awkward questions, didn’t pry, never pushed anything; she was just what Hanne needed most – a friend. She had a nice sense of humour and an intriguing love life she was only too happy to share with Hanne. Naturally she never asked Hanne about her own private life, but Hanne did volunteer small bits of information, though without being so reckless as to mention the Englishman.
But one afternoon she did allude to there being someone special in her life and Marie asked her to tell her more; Hanne said perhaps tomorrow. That night she was so restless that in the early hours of the morning she went to the back of the hut for some fresh air.
The shutters there were always left partially open and through them she saw Marie outside, her face caught in the moonlight, talking to the man everyone knew was
from the camp’s Gestapo office with one of the senior SS officers next to them. She couldn’t hear what was said but it appeared to be an amicable conversation, broken by laughter and the shaking of hands as they parted. As Marie walked back to the hut she came closer to the shutters and Hanne saw she was chewing a sausage.
The next day Marie was as friendly as ever, slipping quite a large piece of bread to Hanne, along with half an apple she said she’d found in a bin.
‘The someone special in your life, Hanne – you mentioned him yesterday?’
Hanne said it upset her to talk about it and Marie left the matter for a while but later on told her she was obviously upset but affairs of the heart – that was the phrase she used – were always better when discussed with someone else, which Hanne didn’t happen to think they were. But she told Marie perhaps she was right before giving a long and overcomplicated account of a love affair which had never happened: a handsome ship’s captain – older than her – who sailed out of Copenhagen. He was the love of her live, but spent too long at sea and she could never completely trust him.
‘And when was this, Hanne?’
Before the war.
‘And no one else since?’
Hanne shook her head: no one. She didn’t trust men any longer she said. ‘In fact,’ she told Marie, trying not to make it sound too pointed, ‘I’m not sure I trust anyone.’
Chapter 21
Thessaloniki and Istanbul
October 1943
It had, of course, been a disaster – the kind of bungled operation which Berlin would get to hear about, the consequences of that being too horrendous to contemplate.
It had started well enough that Monday morning: a tip-off from a clerk at a hotel just off Aristotelous Square. The clerk felt it was his duty – his patriotic duty no less – to report he’d overheard the manager taking a large bribe to delete any record of a certain guest ever having stayed there. Were the Gestapo by any chance interested, the patriotic clerk wondered?